A Geek's Opinion

Thirty five percent of all humans use the internet. The internet is used for many things these days, you can do your banking, communicate with friends overseas and download data in its masses. But unfortunately nothing is pure, nothing is safe and nothing can be trusted. The internet is full of virus, hackers and phishers. Today I will be focusing on phishers. Many people are unaware of Phishers.

Phishers ‘troll’ the internet and certain websites for personal information. They mostly go for things like credit card details or you bank details and do it very cleverly as well. Sending out emails that look identical to the Commonwealth Banks emails. They will asked for access codes and everything personal. Phishers usually use professional enterprises like banks, ISP firms and all other potential sellers.

I believe that people that just buy a computer should consider being taught how to be safe (safe as you can be) online. It doesn’t have to be anything major, just some background research on each threats and how to prevent falling victim to a cyber attack. Especially Phishing, not many people are aware of them or the threats it proposes. Recently a mate and I built a computer for an old lady and I made sure I sat her down and told her of the dangers that the internet holds. Now if she is unsure of certain things she calls me, great. We all need to teach the unfortunate.

One question comes to my mind every time I think of Phishing. Why do they do it? Honestly I can not think of an answer that would support the action of stealing personal information or causing a person stress. But for the sake of this blog post I will try to think of something. If you are talented with computers, like super genius with them and programming you might find this particularly easy, I think. I am not an expert on computer virus creation or web design so I have no idea on how simple it is. But lets just say you are. You punch in a few lines here and there you will be well on your way to gaining your goal, either payment or enjoyment from other peoples stress. If a hacking firm were to pay you BIG money for a simple task, would you do it?

I certainly would not, there is too much at stake. In Australia it is a jail sentence and a massive fine. But that’s just me. I am an Internet angel, I do not download anything illegal or carry out any illegal activities.

Many of us probably have grand parents or know someone elderly that is very uncomfortable with shopping online or giving out anything personal online. Basically not attracting unwanted attention. So should we listen to our elders and not give out personal information online?

I don’t think so, if you educate yourself on these topics (as I mentioned above) you will be safe. That is unless you have a mental breakdown and forget everything geek. But once a geek always a geek.

I have said some solution that I think you could do but what about the companies that are being set-up in these attacks? Companies like the Commonwealth Bank, someone is sending out emails asking for banking details to their customers. Commonwealth Bank has put a hoax enquire email address, any fraud emails must be forwarded to this email address to help stop them from being sent in the first place.

Well there you go, I hope you liked my opinion on Phishing and why I think it is done.

On my wonderful weekend I was fortunate enough to experience my friends true opinions of myself blogging. It is apparently a “waste of time.” This came about as my friends tried to pressuring me into continuing my former gaming addiction. Which was kind of interesting.

I can see where they are coming from (in their eyes). I just sit on my computer researching and reading various tweets and articles, how boring (again, in their eyes). But you see they don’t see gaming the way I do. I see gaming as you sitting in front of the computer tapping a few buttons, killing a few things, winning a few races or gaining a few levels for no personal development.

Blogging provides me with a way to express my feelings and better my writing skills. It is also an unpolished passion of mine. So when I compare levelling up for no realistic reason with a pure learning experience and a passion, gaming seems pretty pointless, to me.

So what I am trying to say is, do what you want. You will be surprised with the results. Yeah they maybe your friends or family but, make sure they see what you see and the true you.

DO WANT YOU WANT TO DO.

.I have been at school for only two weeks and I am already pulling my hair out. “OMG, it has been three days since I have blogged.”  So I am in need of some organisation for my two worlds, blogging and school.

The trouble is I really enjoy writing and posting on Geeks but I am facing the hardest semester out of my twelve years of school at the moment. So I am finding it hard to find time to write and post. But I think I have a solution. Google Calender,  a genius tool that allows you to set alarms for you due assessment or a reminder for whatever you have down. So what do I plan to do with this tool?

I will brainstorm blog post idea’s and then set a date were it will be written and published. Same goes with the dreaded assignments, I will set the draft due date a week early so I will have plenty of time to edit and achieve the best mark possible. I hope this works. Have you got any other idea’s? I am out of options if this fails, I might even have to stop blogging…

After my College trip last week it got me thinking and cleared a few things up for me about college. I definitely want to go study, just not engineering. I found that I excelled at the practical side of Engineering just not the theory side. Partially because I don’t not study advance maths and physics. So what do I want to now?

I am slowly flicking my way through many, many university pamphlets on different courses and universities looking at what they offer me and what I will come out with at the end. So what course will suit me? Something with writing and technology fused together. You know what that is? Multimedia Journalism, it focuses on the new age of news like, twitter and blogging. But is still tied in with old fashion journalism skills. I can see it now “Hi, I am James Hill and I tweet, blog and vlog for a living.”

Not only will I be improving my skills as a blogger but improving my communication and technological skills.

The University I am also looking at attending will provide me with unique experience with some of the best equipment available today. Like Octo-core Mac Pro’s and Super Duper HD camera’s. It shall be fully sick.

Being able to express my thoughts and digitalise them is just amazing. The best thing is though I will one of the first students studying this course. I just have to get through the hardest semester of my twelve years of schooling…. ever.

College is a big step for a person, yeah? I seem to think so. For the next week and a half I will be participated in activities that will help me gain the position that I want for college next year. I would like to study engineering at my closet university.

Tomorrow morning I will have to wake up nice and early and travel to Townsville and register for the Engineering Link Program. The course covers three majors in Engineering over the three days. Each day we are given a problem that we must solve, design our solution and then build it. Each day will be a different problem in a different field.

If I have an internet connection I will upload posts on what I did that day and maybe a little extra. Because I love you guys.

Then after I get back I will be off to Biology Camp which will involve; find a stick, pick up the stick, draw the stick and place it back where you found it. Sounds like fun, not!

I am so excited on going to a university and getting to experience the culture of the class’ and practicals. Yippee!

Well I have to hype down so I can go to bed. Catch you all later.

After reading Michael Hyatt’s blog post, “Top 10 reasons to buy the new IPhone 3G” I felt that there could be more added to his post. So, I have come up with four more reasons why you need too buy the new IPhone 3G.

If you are considering of buying one, do it. You will not regret it. Its the Rolls Royce of phones, Everything is there or in a option box (app). So lets see what I have come up with. Its pretty obvious, but they are what really matter to me.

1. Cut, Copy and Paste: I literally use this about one hundred times a day. No joke. So when I found out the new IPhone 3G had it I was so happy and disappointed. Why disappointed? Because I can’t afford it. Why Apple didn’t include this before has got me, it is a need for many. As Chris Pirillo said in his review “I actually used it!” You never know if you are going to use it or not. One day you might find a quote that you like and want to set it as your facebook status. But, you are too lazy to type it out. What do you use? Cut, Copy and Paste, bud.
2. A landscape QWERTY keyboard: Not having a landscape keyboard would have to be one of the most annoying things you can come across, agreed? This is also great for the elderly person market. Example, my mother likes big buttons so she can see them and it makes it easier to type. So now that the keyboard is landscape she will be able to type much, much faster because the buttons will be spread out much more, making them big and more ideal for her.
3. Voice Memo’s: Now, this may not be the most appealing to most people but, it makes me cry of happiness. Instead of carrying a notepad and pen with me I will be able to record my blog post idea’s on a cool IPhone, instead of looking like a total freak when I have an “Eureka” moment and randomly start scribbling things down on the notepad I pulled out of my pants. But I am sure there are a lot of other things normal people can think of to use this feature. Apple have also included the “trim” feature which allows you to be able to cut out all those scenes of you yelling at the kids and send the appropriate memo. I am sure plenty of on-the-go parents will appreciate this.
4. Now before this post had never knew about tethering until, Google provided me with the answers. Good old Google. Tethering is great! I can’t believe I didn’t know what it was (not much of a geek). On the new IPhone you can do it wireless or wired, totally up to you and if I am correct, you were able to do it on the old one’s but you ran the risk of your service being canceled. I am unsure of this.

After seeing all the new features on the new IPhone it is just making (in my opinion) the IPhone more and more invincible. Much like World of Warcraft for MMO’s. Imagine if you fused them two together. Blizzard and Apple will be set.

Prepaid iPhones: Will Australia be left out again?

Protoss, known for there killer instinct and their cruel amusement of killing for fun… Protoss are back along with their mothership and are ready to fight for survival against Zerg and Terran once again. One of my friends has been addicted to Starcraft for years and could probably beat Koreans at their own game.

But now, Blizzard are coming out with all guns blazing with a new 3D graphics engine that will support bigger, better battles and help gamers fight one each other for ultimate bragging rights, but will this long awaited game bring back PC gaming?

Zerg Cinematic after watching this I preordered the game…

Zerg Corruptor

It is hard to say, there sure is a lot of debates about this, in my opinion Starcraft 2 is breath of fresh air for PC gamers. But one can’t give a title to a game that hasn’t been released, so time will tell… As always. But there is one doubt on my mind. The fact there is NO LAN support just Battle.net. But I think this is just Blizzard way of stopping piracy, which I am a strong supporter of.

I have to say Blizzard have really out done themselves in both Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 with adding new features left, right and centre. The list is actually quite impressive. If you have any idea what the original games were like.

“Heaps of new units” I haven’t went over the newly foundered units list just yet but I have had a quick squizz. I love the names, very creative.

All in all this breath of fresh air in my opinion will sell heaps and please many. But who will win in the number of sold copies between Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2?

If this product is what is going to be used in Google’s Cloud based OS as the office suite, I will be first inline for the download. Today I will be reviewing the latest and greatest Google Docs. The word processing element. When I first heard about I would have to say, I didn’t want anything to do with it. Why? Because I thought it was going to be rubbish. I am glad I said “I thought.”

It really is something to brag about, it would have to be one of the greatest idea’s produced by google. Of course they are not alone though, ZOHO is Google’s competition. I will be doing another review on ZOHO writer later this week.

This image is from http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/

The only bad thing I can think of is the fact that it is online but that is also an advantage. But overall, Google has done a fantastic job, complete with both DOCX and XLSX support.  Another thing that impressed me was the print preview feature, I did not expect that. Oh, did I mention it is FREE! If you are after a good free office suite, check out my Open Office 3.1 review.

Pro’s

Upload from and save to your desktop.

Edit any time, from anywhere.

Share you documents with anyone.

Your files are stored securely online

DOCX  support.

XLSX support.

Print preview.

Foot notes, this is great for students.

Very nice clean font, I hate Times New Roman.

It’s web based.

Cons

It’s web based.

Rating

9.5/10 I strongly urge you to check it out.

After all the trouble I went through with my PC, I am still getting issue’s. You know just the occasional Blue Screen Of Death, no biggy. You seen after you have a had and seen as many as I have you learn to love them and embrace them. NOT.

They would have to be the biggest sign to tell you “You are screwed!” I know what the problem is in mine. Its my Hard drive. I will have to consult my parents for a new one, unless any of you want a computer built and live in Australia. I didn’t think so, if you are on here you are probably are a Mac user of know how to build one. But on with the story.

Blue Screens of Death for the average not tech savvy computer user are horrible. The lady I served for this morning, was terrified to see her ‘baby’ dying. I can relate to this. Just think back when you weren’t tech savvy. For some of us that is NEVER. We are breed into tech geeks. But for people like me we had to teach ourselves because our families are basically rocks when it comes to computers. Useless.

The first time I saw a blue screen of death it was on a drizzly Tuesday… I am joking. I was probably about eight or ten and I immediately grab a camera and took a photo of it and rode do to my nearest tech shop and showed them. That was the day that I became a nerd geek. From there on Blue screens of death have been a apart of my life and I think they will still be there for a while.

Blue Screens of death are here to stay and we need to embrace them… Or throw your PC out the window and buy a Mac. Your choice.

After reading this news article over at PC Authority I found out that in the US, Best Buy is asking for all job applicants to have at least 250 followers. This then sparked the idea that is this the start of a new generation of qualifications?

Will our next jobs be influenced by this little bird?

A generation were people are hired for how many followers they have instead of the usual criteria of experience and qualifications. So now the big electronics retailer has asked for it will there be others that do the same? I think yes, it is like ASUS bringing out the first netbook, others will follow (haha, I didn’t mean that). Next you will see Walmart and Harvey Norman doing the same.

But I see one major problem standing in the way of Best Buys new criteria, anyone with a Visa and half a brain can hire followers. So how can they tell if the followers are genuine. I am sure Best Buy would prefer Quality instead of Quantity. But hey, if it works then I will have to get my twitter on.

So what do you think is this just the start, is this Gattaca but with Twitter?